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Post by steev on Apr 5, 2012 10:35:07 GMT -5
Thinking of Mars being colonized with Joseph's Lichen Landrace, "Formed on Terra to terraform Mars", which could lead to establishing herds of reindeer, I started considering the results of putting all species back where they arose: no humans in the Americas; no horses outside the Americas; no apples outside Central Asia; no corn outside Mesoamerica. Doesn't seem all that good a deal to me. I wouldn't miss star thistle, though.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Apr 5, 2012 12:40:34 GMT -5
Well since horses were once native to the Americas i think you could let the horses stay, but you'd probably have to import camels too. I still think it would be cool to breed a mountain lion with a african lion and see if the resulting cross would be closer to an ancestral lion or what. I also think it would be interesting to try and breed animals back to what they were originally. It wouldn't really do anything useful, but it would be very interesting. One idea i had would be to somehow reactivate the back limbs on whales and maybe even teeth. Would their hind limbs come out as legs (from when they walked on land) or would they be hind flippers? Would some of the whales suddenly grow sharp teeth and become predators again even though many of them have adapted to eat crill with no need for teeth at all?
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Post by johninfla on Apr 5, 2012 13:34:56 GMT -5
I read somewhere that there is a breeder in Europe who is trying to breed the auroch back into existence......sorry I can't be more vague John
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 5, 2012 15:14:12 GMT -5
I read somewhere that there is a breeder in Europe who is trying to breed the auroch back into existence......sorry I can't be more vague TaurOS has sequenced the DNA of fossil aurochs, and of modern primitive cattle, and through a selective breeding program are recombining those genes in the offspring in order to recombine the genes as they were in the pre-domesticated (european) aurochs. Wikimedia has a photo that shows the intended phenotype on the bottom, and the breeds on top that are contributing genes to the project.
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Post by blueadzuki on Apr 5, 2012 16:39:10 GMT -5
. I still think it would be cool to breed a mountain lion with a african lion and see if the resulting cross would be closer to an ancestral lion or what. Probably wouldn't work. Despite thier similar appearace, the African Lion and Mountain Lion aren't all that closely related. Puma's branched off of the Feline family tree pretty early. The closest living cat to the Mountain Lion (except for the small jagurarundi) is actually the Cheetah. In fact there is a super rare sub form of Puma called an Onza found in some mountains in the SW Mexico area (and considered a cryptozoological myth until one was actually shot and analyzed) that is defined by a body form that is far more cheetah-ish than puma-ish. Whenever I hear about plans to ressurect extinct species. I am always of two mind. While I would LOVE to be able to see these animals in the flesh, there is always the big question of where we'd actually put them. In many cases, not only has the animal gone extinct but so has it's environment (in the sense of changing so much that it can no longer support that specific species). You either have a choice of letting it back into a wild that has often changed a great deal since the animal left (which will in all likleyhood result in its very rapid re-extinction) or set up little preserves desinged to replicate the ecosystems that the animals were in (to the best of our abilites) and keep those artificial environments maintained in perpetuity, which would take VAST amounts of resources. For example with the Aurochs project above, where exactly would you put those herds. Most of the deep forests they called native homes are gone. On a preserve, they would basically end up getting maintained like farmed game animals, and as someone else pointed out on another site, such aurochses would not be all that different from domestic cattle. It would be a bit like called the Pata Negra of Iberia (the pigs they use to make the really really expensive ham) "wild pigs" because they are free to wander around the forest eating acorns and chesnuts (forests which have been carefully planted grown and maintained by people to make sure that there are plenty of those "wild" acorns for the "wild" pigs to eat.) Intersting side note, I once discussed with someone what would be the closest you could get to figuring out what an aurochs tasted like, and the consensus was that the closest you could probably get would be in Australia, where they do have herds of feral cattle (descendents of bulls and cows abandoned by homeseaders). For my part I'd love to see someone bring back Haast's eagle (a New Zealand pair of species with wingspans between 12 and 15 feet). But I realize it would be a no go, they ate primarily small species of moa, there are no "moa" of those (well, unless you belive the people who think there may still be a few upland moas hiding in the deeper recesses of Fiordland). Thogh they might adapt to moder modern prey (it occurs to me that an eagle the Maori's (or actually the Moriori's) claimed regulary carred off and ate children, might be very comfortabe hunting sheep and small deer.) I'd also love that odd Oceanic turtle(s) that had the spikes all over it (like an ankylosaurs or a glyptodont) , for purely personal reasons (I think it would make a really cool pet).
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Post by steev on Apr 5, 2012 20:16:39 GMT -5
Nice segue, Wood-N-Stake.
I think what should be resurrected is Devonian amphibians. Something really big, primitive, and hungry that mostly just lies there until something edible walks by; kind of like a sedentary land-shark, to thin the herd of folks walking around with their heads up their cell-phones.
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greltam
grub
Everything IS a conspiracy :]
Posts: 59
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Post by greltam on Apr 5, 2012 20:39:18 GMT -5
This is a somewhat wild tangent, but I personally would like to breed raccoon(s) in the future for bipedal posture/opposable thumbs/larger brains to replace/compete with humans as the dominant life form on earth. Probably would take tens of thousands of years though for distinct changes to come about though.. But someone's got to start, right?
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Post by steev on Apr 5, 2012 21:02:20 GMT -5
What makes you think raccoons aren't already smarter than most humans?
Bipedal posture? Why wish all that lower-back pain on a poor raccoon?
Opposable thumbs? Raccoons have remarkably useful paws, such soft and sensitive palms.
No, I think they're already quite competitive with humans. As a graveyard cabdriver, I saw them all over Oakland, using the storm drains as roads and refuges. For our own protection, we need to sucker them into being addicted to cell-phones, or we haven't a chance.
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Post by blueadzuki on Apr 6, 2012 8:17:32 GMT -5
Nice segue, Wood-N-Stake. I think what should be resurrected is Devonian amphibians. Something really big, primitive, and hungry that mostly just lies there until something edible walks by; kind of like a sedentary land-shark, to thin the herd of folks walking around with their heads up their cell-phones. Another tricky one, I'm afraid. The Devonian period had a lot more oxygen in the atmosphere than we do now (or how the dragonflies could grow to the size of hawks). Amphibians rely on absorbing oxygen through thier skins as well as thier lungs, which are often inadequate for providing enough oxygen for thier bodies. So Devonian amphibians would likey suffocate in our modern world.
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Post by johninfla on Apr 6, 2012 9:32:43 GMT -5
We should resurrect the ancient, dinosaur form of okra (aka Hibiscus Verybiggus) and then imagine the barbecue we could have with Aurochs sandwiches and fried okra.....someone would have to work on an ancient pig so we could have pork sandwiches too.
John
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Post by steev on Apr 6, 2012 10:08:50 GMT -5
Sorry, johninfla; the proper latinate binomial there is Hibiscus humongous.
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Post by johninfla on Apr 6, 2012 10:49:32 GMT -5
Thanks for the correction.....I believe that H. Verybiggus was the ancestral form of the rose of sharon which was often used for shade at these dinosaur bbqs....
John
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Post by blueadzuki on Apr 6, 2012 15:58:51 GMT -5
Thanks for the correction.....I believe that H. Verybiggus was the ancestral form of the rose of sharon which was often used for shade at these dinosaur bbqs.... John no that would be Hibiscus brobdingnagius
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Post by templeton on Apr 6, 2012 17:28:38 GMT -5
I promised myself I wouldn't do another post on this topic. This is it. Soapbox I don't care much about island ecosystems, they are rather fragile, ephemeral, and transitory to start with, since islands tend to arise nearly lifeless from the water and then to erode back into the waves. That's a great recipe for creating new species, but its a bugger for keeping them around. If island species are of value, the best way I can imagine for preserving them is the wholesale export of their ecosystems to the mainland. This is just wrong. You are welcome to your continental biases, but that's all they are. Islands don't just arise lifeless from the water, then erode back into the waves - Australia, Papua Newguinea, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Greenland, Madagascar, New Caledonia, New Britain etc etc. (Do I detect a teensy hint of North American myopia in his assertions he self righteously thinks...) The shield areas of Western Australia are the oldest rocks on the surface of the earth. The 40 million year lineage of australian ecosystems is hardly ephemeral. As for the experiment on Ascension - who is to say that what exists there now is actually more desirable than what was there before the British navy started meddling? I'd prefer the original, thanks. Darwin didn't get everything right. Stop fiddling with ecosystems, just leave 'em alone to get on with their own business, at their own pace, instead of trying to 'improve' them. That just seems so presumptuous. (promises self - I will NOT get sucked into this debate again... ) T
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 6, 2012 18:03:14 GMT -5
My philosophy is that we can't know that moving species improves or harms anything. It's one of those things that can only be addressed metaphysically, it can't be measured objectively. But no matter how many ways I think about it, I just can't bring myself to believe that present on some arbitrary date = noble and anything else equals evil. So metaphysically, I have decided that for me and for my life, moving species is noble, and that it is wrong to eradicate species merely because they are living in an allegedly unacceptable time/space. (There's the whole poison peddler thing too, but that's a separate issue.)
If you want to know what my bias is... I am very much biased against marsupials: Oh my heck!!! Have you ever seen an opossum? Creeps me out. I'd definitely export them to Australia....
It's all politics anyway... The way to counter the claim that islands are very-fragile and need extra-super-hero protection wonder-twin-powers-activate, is to say "I don't care about islands"
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